Monday, June 23, 2008

Fiction release: "Slave Pits of Bey Su."

I write fiction and non-fiction although I've had more success with the non-fiction. Nevertheless, a new short story by yours truly has just been released in "Seal of the Imperium," a relatively new Tekumel fanzine.

Tekumel is a science fantasy world developed by Professor M.A.R.Barker and first shared with the public in the classic role-playing game, "Empire of the Petal Throne." Essentially Tekumel is a lost star colony that has become trapped in a pocket dimension where the laws of physics work a bit differently than ours, enabling some humans to occasionally warp the fabric of reality, and powerful, extra-planar beings to masquerade as Gods. Set in the far future, it has been millenia since humans have come to Tekumel, and in that time they have not only forgotten their true origins, they have also lost much of their technology and developed several elaborate, hierarchical, tradition bound civilizations. On this different, yet very old, world, humans struggle not only with each other and the native life forms, but also with the descendants of countless plant and animal species from several alien worlds that came here with them,

Unlike most fantasy worlds that I've discovered, I've found that my appreciation and interest in Tekumel has grown over the years, especially as my knowledge of history, anthropology and other cultures has expanded.

It was fun using my writing skills to contribute to the Tekumel mythos and I hope to do so again some day in the future.

I tend to write several entries on a subject and although admittedly they are of variable quality by following the topic keys then one should get a fairly complete view of what I think on the issue. There's a lot of good information buried here particularly on some obscure subjects related to assisting newly arrived refugees, particularly from Burma. These subjects include furniture donation issues, driver education and even domestic violence. If these issues interest you, follow the internal links, do searches, there's a lot here and I've found that often people search on a subject using google, I've written an answer, but the search engines sent them to some other entry where I discussed only a small part of the issue. So if a subject that interests you has a truly mediocre entry there is probably a good one hidden away as well on different aspects of the same subject You can't get a full picture on the issues covered in this blog by reading just one entry. it wasn't written that way. If you still don't see what you want, feel free to drop me an e-mail. Thank you.

About Me

Journalist, educator, and low level Asian history scholar who dabbles in fiction. Peter Huston is the author of several books, including Scams from the Great Beyond, Tong, Gangs, and Triads,, and the novel, Excess Emotional Baggage.
Interests include :
1) Internatinal Education and Teaching English as a Second or other Language,
2)refugee concerns and refugee resettlement,
3)self defense and martial arts,
4) Asian culture and history,
5) censorship controversies
6) the skeptical examination of paranormal and pseudo-scientific claims.
Education includes a master's degree in East Asian Studies from Cornell and a second master's degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from the University at Albany, party of the New York State SUNY system.
I am not the sailing guy, sports betting guy or the attorney guy. These people who use the name Peter Huston are, presumably, impostors. I am the real
Peter Huston.